Partners Group Insiders Buy CHF 20 Million in Shares as Redemption Caps and Analyst Downgrades Pressure Stock

Partners Group's Evergreen funds hit by redemption squeeze, share price near multi-year lows. Insiders buy over CHF 20M, but analysts downgrade on structural concerns.

The tension at Partners Group is playing out in starkly opposing signals. While the company’s flagship Evergreen funds face an unprecedented redemption squeeze that has pushed the share price to near multi-year lows, the executives charged with steering through the crisis are aggressively deploying their own capital. The divergence between insider confidence and external scepticism has rarely been sharper.

The immediate catalyst is a liquidity crunch in two of the firm’s largest open-ended vehicles. In the $8.6 billion Global Value SICAV, investors submitted redemption requests equivalent to 9.8% of net asset value – nearly double the quarterly cap of 5%. As a result, only about 62% of those demands will be honoured. A separate US vehicle, with roughly $16 billion in assets, saw requests of 6%, also breaching the threshold. Partners Group has defended the caps as a safeguard against forced portfolio sales, but the market reaction has been brutal. The stock now trades at €764.00, roughly 30% below its start-of-year level and dangerously close to the 52-week floor of €733.00. The relative strength index sits at 26.7, deep in oversold territory.

Against that backdrop, the boardroom buying spree stands out. Over two days, two executive directors and one non-executive member purchased shares worth a combined CHF 2.2 million. One executive picked up 1,400 shares for nearly CHF 1 million on 9 June, while a non-executive added 250 shares for around CHF 178,000. The previous day, another executive also bought 1,400 shares. In total, insider purchases have exceeded CHF 20 million in recent weeks, with co-founder Fredy Gantner confirming he too has added to his stake. Such concentrated buying is rare and typically signals conviction that the sell-off has overshot.

Yet the analyst community is not yet convinced. Oddo BHF stripped its buy rating on the stock, downgrading to "Neutral" and setting a new price target of CHF 920. A day later, Rothschild & Co. Redburn followed suit, lowering its own target while maintaining a "Neutral" stance. The downgrades reflect growing concern about the structural drag from the Evergreen funds, where redemptions are slowing net asset growth precisely when the firm most needs momentum.

Management, however, is holding steady on its medium-term targets. Partners Group still expects gross new money inflows of between $26 billion and $32 billion for 2026. The group ended 2025 with $184.9 billion in assets under management. But the redemptions will take a toll: the company now forecasts that net AuM growth in the second half will be trimmed by one to two percentage points, with a similar dent possible in 2027. That matters because management fees are directly tied to the size of the asset base.

The next hard data point arrives on 15 July, when Partners Group releases its regular AuM update as of 30 June. Investors will be watching closely to see whether institutional inflows can offset the retail outflows that triggered the cap. A full half-year report follows on 1 September, offering a more detailed look at the underlying liquidity picture. Until then, the stock appears caught between the board’s bullish conviction and the market’s deepening unease.